A few minutes with ... Dalton Higgins

By Dane Swan

Throughout the month I have been sharing interviews with members of the literary community. Today, I have the privilege of sharing my conversation with best-selling author, journalist, speaker, publicist, and event presenter Dalton Higgins.

Dane:

What is cultural erasure?

DH:

Cultural erasure is what we are seeing in contemporary rock n’ roll, blues, jazz, hip hop, reggae…uhhh, you know black folk invented all of those genres, right? If you were to pay attention to the media, and some self anointed arbiters of culture in the mainstream, you would never know. As a long-time hip hop and black popular culture documentarian, erasure is seeing all kinds of films, book projects that directly involve black inventions, art, music and culture, that are sadly and completely devoid of black people steering the ship as directors, editors and senior contributors. That will always be suspect and sinister. I don’t know if I could willfully support this Joseph Boydenization of our black culture.

Dane:

How does this threat influence your writing?

DH:

It really doesn’t, because I have a well cultivated audience, who are Ginsu sharp, and are more forward thinking people who don’t fit so neatly in any boxes. I tend to work out of the tradition of Toni Cade Bambara, James Baldwin, Killer Mike, Malcolm Gladwell, Assata Shakur, Lee Scratch Perry, Peter Dean Rickards and countless others whose names I won’t put out there for fear of the large and growing legions of black music parasites and vampires who troll me and sloppily attempt to borrow my original concepts and ideas, and then claim it as their own. I see all of it, and that's why I only share surface, easily digestible thoughts on social media, not the real stuff.

Dane:

Your writing often looks at the influence of Canadian black culture on pop-culture. How does black culture's influence on pop culture differ here from its impact in the US?

DH:

One of my favorite books is Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. It does a good job of playing around with this whole notion of invisibility. Outside of working on the athletic playing fields and in recording studio’s (think Drake, Toronto Raptors players), the black community is not really taken that seriously here. When you look at any real measures of equality - and focus in on items that have nothing to do with basketball, or rapping; housing in the city, who’s at City Hall (councilors), staffing at media outlets, Bay street, it’s really quite disturbing. Remove the window dressing (i.e. the one token black guy and gal who might be working in any of these sectors) and we are largely invisible. I find that fascinating. Both from a pop culture and societal standpoint.

Dane:

Six books into your writing career, has it gotten easier to get work published? What hurdles do you face now as an author that you didn't expect to still deal with this deep into your career as an author?

DH:

To be honest, I have sold quite a large number of books collectively, so I can get meetings with whomever I feel deserves my work and attention. I would say the bigger issue is that when authors hit a certain stage or have sold a certain number of books, they no longer feel they have anything to prove to validate their work or their worth. Especially to those out of touch with the here and now, with hip hop culture, with black culture and its tremendous impact on fashion, technology, marketing. Having a two-term black president certainly hasn’t meant much to us here in Canada, especially if you are a black, hip hoppy scribe who incorporates tech speak in his prose and is obsessed with the zeitgeist. And who is based in Canada.

Dane:

What advice do you have for future non-fiction authors?

DH:

What I would also say is that the sharper emerging non-fiction authors of a racialized persuasion need to be weary of the window dressing here. This idea that if you hire a token racialized person here and there, throw a few (and I do mean few) bucks at some check box, by-the-numbers diversity initiatives and somehow hope that ages old systemic and structural issues will go away is really quite odd. The industry here likes to champion one or two of us at a time, and its not nearly enough. Also, ignore some of what the very insular local literati think is hot. Go against the grain. If I were to pay attention to Canadian literary trends, especially writing from a proud black and hip hoppy POV, I would still be stuck working on my first manuscript.

Dane:

What projects should we be looking forward to from you?

DH:

I’m particularly intrigued by the graphic novel universe, that’s all I’ll say for now. I’m always contributing essays to other projects, anthologies, and there’s this cool one involving black and Indigenous hip hop intersections that I’m in the editing process on for my contribution.

The more tomes I crank out, or contribute to, they will be more straight no chaser than ever, and will go down like Wray and Nephew 100 proof Jamaican white rum. It’s also all about paying it forward, there are some amazing young black voices lurking in the, dare I say it, hip hop underground (which is the blogosphere) who I will be helping to navigate, rise above and/or completely avoid these traps.

BIO

Dalton Higgins is an author, publicist, National Magazine Award-winning journalist and festival presenter whose six books and 500+ concert presentations have taken him to Denmark, Australia, France, Colombia, Spain, Curacao, Germany, England, Cuba and throughout many parts of the United States. His biography of rapper Drake, Far From Over, is carried in Cleveland’s Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame & Museum collection, and his best-selling Hip Hop World title is carried in Harvard University’s hip hop archive. His latest book Rap N’ Roll is a collection of essays that delves into a world where race, technology, music and counterculture collide.

The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book.

Dane Swan is a Bermuda-raised, Toronto-based internationally published poet, writer and musician. His first collection, Bending the Continuum was launched by Guernica Editions in the Spring of 2011. The collection was a recommended mid-summer read by Open Book: Toronto. In 2013 Dane was short listed for the Monica Ladell Award (Scarborough Arts) for his poem "Stopwatch."